Seattle Times February 5, 2002
Bush budget packed with Boeing work
By David Bowermaster
Boeing was one of the big winners when President Bush unveiled his $379 billion Pentagon budget for fiscal 2003 yesterday, but cutting-edge technologies such as unmanned aircraft did not fare as well as old favorites like fighter jets and troop transports.
The top beneficiary in the Puget Sound region was the F-22 Raptor, the Air Force's newest air-to-air fighter jet. The White House requested $4.6 billion to purchase 23 F-22s in 2003 and to make down payments on 27 more for 2004.
Although Lockheed Martin is the lead contractor, Boeing builds roughly one-third of each aircraft here, including the wings, aft fuselage and avionics. About 1,400 Boeing employees in the region work on the program, roughly half the 2,800 workers in Boeing's military aircraft and missiles division based here.
The president's budget also requests $4 billion for 12 C-17 troop transports, which Boeing builds in Long Beach, Calif., and $3.1 billion for 44 F/A-18E/F fighters for the Navy. Also known as the Super Hornet, the FA-18E/F is built in St. Louis.
Those numbers could rise as the budget makes its way through Congress, analysts said, because lawmakers are eager to show they are helping the military do their job in places like Afghanistan.
"Strategic lift, (aircraft) carrier air power - these are all hot-button issues that really resonate with voters," said Richard Aboulafia, a senior analyst with the Teal Group, an aerospace-consulting firm.
The budget does not include funding for 767 refueling tankers for the Air Force, but that money is more likely to come in the years the aircraft come off the production line. Congress in December authorized the Air Force to explore a plan to lease up to 100 767 tankers from Boeing for about $20 billion, but a decision to move forward has not been made.
"The first money I would expect to be placed in a budget (for 767 tankers) would be when the actual airplanes start being delivered" in around 2005, said Paul Guse, a Boeing spokesman.
Boeing is doing the development work for the 767 tankers "on our own nickel," Guse added, so research-and-development funds are not needed in the meantime.
The White House also wants $2 billion for 11 of the controversial V-22 Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft for the Marines that can take off and land like a helicopter and fly like a plane. Twenty-three Marines died in two separate Osprey crashes in 2000.
The funding for fiscal 2003 includes more than $400 million for safety and reliability testing.
"They've extended the test phase on it, so the anxieties that you end up with something that doesn't work have been ameliorated," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a nonpartisan defense research organization.
Laser-guided missiles, which played a prominent role in the military campaign in Afghanistan, received a big boost.
Foremost among these is Boeing's joint direct attack munition, or JDAM - a kit to retrofit conventional 'duvmb' bombs with precision navigational capabilities.
The fiscal 2003 budget calls for $764 million for 35,000 JDAM kits, which are manufactured in St. Louis.
Bush requested $7.8 billion for missile defense, roughly equivalent to the amount in this year's budget.
Approximately $2 billion of that total would go to Boeing, which is the lead integrator on the ground-based portion of the project and also is developing an anti-missile laser that could be carried aboard a specially equipped Boeing 747-400 freighter.
"That will be one area that will be debated" in Congress, said David Baker, a defense analyst with the Charles Schwab Washington Research Group, "but I don't think anyone is going to stand in front of this freight train."
Unmanned aircraft also received a great deal of attention for their expanded role in Afghanistan, but they received relatively little new funding in yesterday's budget request.
Although President Bush is seeking $1 billion for unmanned aircraft, most is to purchase Global Hawk and Predator reconnaissance aircraft manufactured by Northrop Grumman and General Atomics, respectively.
Boeing is the lead contractor developing unmanned combat vehicles, or UCAVs, for the Air Force, but the new budget seeks just $90 million for that program.
"Near to intermediate term, there's not lots and lots of dough," in UCAVs, said Cai von Rumohr, a defense analyst with S.G. Cowen Securities, "They've still got a lot of development work to get done."
Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company
